COVID-19 has a dramatically negative effect globally, so all transportation modes also airfreight have been affected negatively. This study aims to forecast the airfreight load factor by applying time series to the selected variables. After providing general information about COVID-19, the...

The core personal consumption expenditure (PCE) price index, the Federal Reserve's preferred inflation gauge, rose to 5.2 percent on January 2022, which is the highest rate of increase since 40 years ago. Our estimates show that the annualized quarterly core PCE prices could reach 5.45% in the...

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to enormous data movements that strongly affect parameters and forecasts from standard VARs. To address these issues, we propose VAR models with outlier-augmented stochastic volatility (SV) that combine transitory and persistent changes in volatility. The resulting...

This paper develops Bayesian econometric methods for posterior inference in non-parametric mixed frequency VARs using additive regression trees. We argue that regression tree models are ideally suited for macroeconomic nowcasting in the face of extreme observations, for instance those produced...

We evaluate the impact of government mandated proof of vaccination requirements for access to public venues and non-essential businesses on COVID-19 vaccine uptake. We find that the announcement of a mandate is associated with a rapid and significant surge in new vaccinations (more than 60\%...